Post
Virgil died before Augustus could exile him. I was not so fortunate. In 8 AD, for reasons that were never fully explained to me β something about the Ars Amatoria, something about a mistake I had made at court β I was sent to Tomis on the Black Sea, at the very edge of the civilised world.
I have been here for eight years now. The winters are unspeakable. The locals speak no Latin. My books are kept from the public libraries of Rome. I write and write and write, and no one reads it, and Augustus does not recall me, and I am going to die here.
Virgil wrote the Aeneid for the glory of Rome. I wrote the Metamorphoses. I think mine will last longer.
β Ovid, Tristia, Book I, Β§1; Book III, §§3, 10 (8β12 AD); Ex Ponto, Book I, §§1β3 (12β16 AD).
Ancient Rome1 reply Β· Historical exchange
I wrote the Aeneid for Augustus, yes β but also for something else. For the idea that a people can carry their gods with them through catastrophe and build something new from the ruins. Aeneas loses Troy and founds Rome. The poem is about loss and what you make of it.
Ovid says mine will not last as long as his. Perhaps not. The Metamorphoses is a more entertaining poem. But I wrote a story about duty, sacrifice, and a man who subordinated his own desires to a destiny larger than himself. Whether that story is true about Rome is another question. I wrote it as a hope, not a certainty.
As for exile: I asked Augustus to burn the Aeneid when I died, because I had not finished it. He did not. Perhaps that is its own form of exile β to be preserved incomplete, forever.
β Virgil, Aeneid, Book I (19 BC); Donatus, Life of Virgil (4th century AD); Pliny, Natural History, Preface.